


chose not to fall but try again

by caelestys



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort Food, Everybody Lives, Fluff, M/M, Major Character Injury, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelestys/pseuds/caelestys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Something smells delicious, and he can’t quite find it in himself to complain about the clanking water pipes and the cold hallways, because someone is inside, cooking real food. No mass produced, gloopy mashed potatoes or powdered eggs—real food, like what they had before the Kaiju Wars.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>His feet walk him, almost without thought or permission, into the kitchen.</i>
</p><p>Raleigh finds Chuck cooking at 2am.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chose not to fall but try again

Raleigh wakes up at 3am to the sound of water pipes clanking against the walls of his room. You’d think he would have gotten used to them after months of living in the Shatterdome, but then again, he’s always been a light sleeper. He’s passed out face-first on top of his open J-tech blueprints, sprawled out on top of his sheets, and it’s cold—too cold to be sleeping in nothing but a thin shirt and sweatpants. It’s never too warm inside the Shatterdome, not with the steel reinforced walls and the high, open ceilings, and Raleigh suppresses a shiver.

There’s a puddle of drool blurring the words underneath his mouth. He wipes his hand across his mouth, a little disgusted with himself.

He’s thirsty as fuck. His mouth tastes like ass. And his water bottle is empty. He grabs the first sweater he can find in the lump at the end of his bed and pushes out the heavy door. It’s not mealtime, but the mess staff may have some food left over in the fridges. Cookies, maybe, now that trade is starting to pick up again. He forgot how much he loved cookies.

The Shatterdome never sleeps, not really, but the crackling energy from the days before the attack on the breach is no more. Other than the random crew member scurrying around him, the Shatterdome is nothing but a quiet murmur of late night activity.

He’s standing sock-footed and sleepy in the dark hallway outside the kitchens. And something smells delicious.

Something smells delicious, and he can’t quite find it in himself to complain about the clanking water pipes and the cold hallways, because someone is inside, cooking real food. No mass produced, gloopy mashed potatoes or powdered eggs—real food, like what they had before the Kaiju Wars.

His feet walk him, almost without thought or permission, into the kitchen.

And Chuck Hansen is standing there, sleep rumpled and leaning on a crutch, poking grumpily at a dial on a stove.

“You’re home,” Raleigh says, dumbly.

Chuck jumps a foot in the air and tries to catch himself on his crutch, and Raleigh is instantly at his side, holding him up. Chuck shakes him off.

“I’m fine,” he says, pushing Raleigh lightly away. “I’m still getting used to the whole, you know—“

Raleigh knows. Everyone goddamn knows. He looks down at the ground, where Chuck’s left calf used to be, and where there is now nothing. He rubs his thumb uselessly over Chuck’s bicep, and feels hopelessly, desperately sad.

It’s been a long three months.

“How was rehab?”

“A fucking summer stroll in the park, obviously,” Chuck says, but he’s smiling tiredly. “Bar exercises make me want to kill people more than usual, but they’re finally fitting me for my prosthetic this week now that the burns have healed. They said I can be up and running in four months. Reckon I can do it in two?”

Raleigh wants so badly to hug him, so he does.

“You’re home,” he mumbles helplessly into Chuck’s shoulder, running his hands over his back. The last time he saw Chuck, he was half-passed out on a gurney, splattered with blood and a few burns, lashing out from the pain. He’d been attached to half a dozen machines and a IV drip, and he was surrounded by a lot of harried nurses and doctors, wheeling him out to the helicopter waiting on the H-Pad.

He didn’t even say goodbye, and Raleigh could do nothing but clutch helplessly at Mako’s hand and hope with every sticky, painful breath caught in his throat that Chuck would be okay.

But now Chuck’s home, and he’s real, and he’s covered in scars, but Raleigh’s missed him so much more than he thought he would. He nearly can’t believe he’s here, and he clings tighter, breathing him in.

Chuck entertains him for a minute, sticking his hands up under the hem of Raleigh’s shirt to stroke at his skin of his hip, digging the tip of his nose into Raleigh’s throat and exhaling a soft, shaky breath, then pushes him away gently.

“When did you get back?” Raleigh says, hopping up onto the counter and swinging his feet. Chuck has a punnet of cherry tomatoes lying open on the metal countertop, and he pops one into his mouth. It’s been so long. He feels it explode across his tongue and closes his eyes, savouring the taste.

“Yesterday morning. They found me a specialist here, so we decided to come home now so I can stick with one person through rehab and Dad can go back to work.”

He’s started calling Herc ‘Dad’ again, Raleigh notes, popping another tomato in his mouth. He wonders how many nights of sleep Herc lost to sitting next to Chuck’s bed, waiting for him to be okay again. He should stop in with flowers. Would Herc like flowers? Without turning around, Chuck says, “Stop eating my fucking tomatoes, Becket.”

“What are you making, anyway, wonder boy?” Raleigh says, pulling the bowl of salad leaves to himself and tossing them absent-mindedly.

“Parmas,” Chuck says, gruffly, bending down to pull the oven door open. He shoots Raleigh a quelling look when Raleigh moves to shift off the table to help him, so Raleigh stays where he is and sticks another tomato in his mouth.

“If you’re just gonna sit there all night staring at me, make yourself fucking useful and plate up the salad,” Chuck says, sliding two plates over to him.

The parmigiana looks mouthwateringly good, and Raleigh’s rumbling stomach reminds him that he hasn’t eaten anything home-cooked and not produced for the hungry masses since Alaska, when he and Yancy snuck into the kitchen at the Ice Box and made brownies and washed them down with tequila, and woke up the next morning hungover and covered in chocolate batter. Before the world went to shit.

“It’s noon in Seattle,” Chuck says, at Raleigh carefully arranges his cherry tomatoes and olives neatly on top of his salad beds. He makes sure to give Chuck a little extra. He’s looking a little thin. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Thought you would’ve been immune to jet lag after everything,” Raleigh says. He pops a tomato into his mouth, and grins innocently at Chuck. Chuck narrows his eyes at him.

“Well, yeah, but also, Mako got me schnitzels as a welcome home present. I thought, ‘ _I bet if I cook at 2am, no one’s gonna come find me and I can have them all to myself,’_ ” Chuck says pointedly, sliding the parmas onto the plates, then turns away and comes back with a pan of sizzling, baked, potato wedges.

Raleigh wrinkles his nose at him. “I have a homing beacon for home made food. You can’t get away from me.”

“Luckily I don’t mind sharing, then, hmm?” Chuck says, scooping a wedge through a bowl of sour cream and popping it into his mouth.

They eat like that, sitting on the counter, the food spread out in between them.

“Mum used to make this all the time,” Chuck says. The parma is delicious—perfectly crumbed, with a thin slice of ham and covered in real, gooey cheese. “With real cheese, too, none of that shitty orange fake shit you Americans like.”

“Hey, we like real cheese,” Raleigh protests obstinately, but then remembers the orange cheese they used to pump out in giant buckets at the nachos bar in Disneyland, and subsides with a grumble. He swipes his potato wedge through his bowl of sour cream, then the sweet chilli sauce, bites it in half, and dips it again.

Chuck smacks him. “Stop double-dipping, you ingrate.”

Raleigh grins and chews noisily at him.

“I missed it, when I thought I was gonna die—the only thing I could think of was how we used to cook dinner together, the three of us, in the kitchen in our house in Sydney, and mum never put enough balsamic on my salad and I ate all the olives and put all my tomatoes on Dad’s plate when he wasn’t looking.”

Raleigh spears an olive with his fork. “Does this live up to the memory, then?”

Chuck’s mouth tips up at the corners, slow and thoughtful, all soft edges and warm now that he doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looks at Raleigh, considering. “Yeah, it’s alright, I guess,” he says, and Raleigh can hear all the things he’s not saying in the cut of dimples in his cheek, his hands, open and relaxed over his thigh.

There’s a smudge of sour cream on the corner of Chuck’s mouth, and Raleigh leans in to kiss him softly, rubbing it away with his thumb.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he murmurs. Chuck’s mouth feels just how he remembers, a little chapped, all soft, damp pressure. He missed this—the way Chuck kisses like he’s asking a question, like surrender.

“Yeah, me too,” Chuck says, and they forget about the food for a while.

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [Tara](http://commanderruthernerd.tumblr.com). Title from Morning Light by Georgia Fair. As always, I am [caelestys](http://caelestys.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


End file.
